By No More Storms
by wallyflower
Summary: A disgraced Draco Malfoy lives a quiet life in disguise, unable to face the wizarding world and those harmed by the Death-Eaters. He might even be starting to enjoy his exile, until the brighest witch of her age comes into his sleepy university town and takes away what little peace he has found.
1. That Still Centre

Draco's shoes skidded on the floor as he rounded the corner and dashed into the library. If he didn't make it fast enough, other students would be borrowing _Fundamentals of Healing Potions_ for the term and he would have to scour the second-hand bookshops for a copy. According to his first class of the term, this was recommended reading, and he wanted to save his stipend for things other than new school books. He'd run out of class as soon as it was over. The book was bound to be in one of the shelves closer to the back.

When he found it sitting on a high shelf, he was so intent on standing on tiptoe to get it that he completely missed the young woman who'd been reaching for the same text. Their fingers brushed and he was startled so badly that he jumped away immediately, and the book fell to the floor with a thud page-first. She scrambled after it, smoothing the pages as she stood to look at him.

He had been jittery since the end of the war. His friends—the few he had made in this corner of the continent—knew better than to surprise him or to come up behind him; previous attempts had left him shaking in cold sweats, frozen in dueling position. He was like that now. It took a massive effort to lower his wand. He must have looked ridiculous. He was ridiculous. He had always been ridiculous around her.

Hermione Granger got to her feet with a bemused expression and handed him the book. Of course, she had no idea who he was, because his face wasn't his own. Caught off guard, he hadn't immediately realized that he must have been unrecognizable to her. Snape's glamours were the best kind: they were undetectable to all except the most powerful of wizards, and even then the wizards had to be standing quite close to feel them. The glamours gave him the same scrawny build he'd always had, but his curly brown hair, darkened eyes, squared out jaw and glasses would have confused even his own mother. He wasn't himself. Of course. Otherwise, Hermione Granger never would have smiled at him like that.

"It's yours," she said. "Thankfully they have one more copy. Do you have Stringworth for Potions theory too? We must have come from the same class."

He hadn't noticed her there. He had made a habit of sitting at the back, near the door, quiet and alone. It had been the same when they were at school together. In their shared classes, he would sit at the very back so that no one would see him looking at her as she sat at the front. No one would see him looking at the way the light from the windows played with her hair.

When he didn't answer immediately, slackjawed and clumsily reaching for the book (careful not to touch her fingers again), her smile faded a bit and she bid him goodbye. He felt like his fingers burned where they had touched hers. He was in very big trouble.

He should have told Snape about it the moment he got home, so that Snape could alert their handler and have him relocated immediately. After the incident at the library, Draco had to make it through three more classes and his shift at the café; he felt worn out and stretched thin. His feet hurt from standing too long. His face hurt from smiling at the customers.

He thought about casting a Patronus. He opened the door to his tiny studio apartment; it was a luxury to live alone, but they couldn't risk him being caught off guard and revealing his true appearance to a roommate in a careless moment. He toed off his shoes and stumbled, fully clothed, into bed, knowing his bedclothes would smell like coffee in the morning. He stared at the cracks in the ceiling while around him, the town went to bed.

Nobody from Hogwarts knew where he was. There was only Snape, and their handler at the Ministry's Witness Protection Program—a name the Ministry had borrowed from Muggles. Even his mother had only a vague idea of where he had settled, though her letters reached him by owl just fine; she had been warned to address them to Derek Manning, a ridiculous name that had taken him and Severus hours to agree on. He had been a this little university town, a magical community in a tiny corner of Sussex, a little over a year, and was starting the first term of his second year in the university's Healer program. Theirs was a small, well-respected university, but its main attraction was that no one in Draco's year in school had gone here. He and Snape had made sure of that. But there was no mistaking Hermione Granger.

She looked just as he had last seen her, if a little bit healthier and a little bit happier. Back then she had been covered in blood and grime and loss. As everyone in Hogwarts had reeled on the day of the fall of the Dark Lord, a wounded Snape appeared discretely and whisked him away from his parents. It had been a wise thing to do. It had protected him from any immediate retaliatory action borne from excitement at the end of conflict, and allowed Snape, at the directions of the Minister Kingsley Shacklebolt, to secure a place for him at the Witness Protection Program while his trial was conducted in his absence, a concession made because he was a minor.

Draco Malfoy—spineless Malfoy, Slytherin through and through Malfoy—had slithered out of punishment in the end, when it was determined that he had committed no crime worthy of imprisonment, and that his involvement with the Death Eaters was entirely under coercion. He would have been free to go, apart from some thousand hours of community work. But he didn't want to be. He decided it the day that he found out what Hermione Granger had done to her parents.

He'd known Hermione Granger since he was eleven. He had sat in classes with her and exchanged barbs with her; had seen her studying, laughing, casting curses, winning magical battles. But he hadn't realized the depths of her until he found out that she had spelled her parents' minds to erase all memories of her, and bundled them off to safety in another continent. It was an irreversible spell. Snape had told him.

Having lived with the threat of losing his own parents under Voldemort's thumb, Hermione's actions had sent a newly-exonerated Draco down a path of introspection which ultimately led him here. He couldn't quite bear the thought that his actions in the war, and those of his family and friends, had orphaned her, and had done the same to others, while he walked away with both parents alive (though his father imprisoned) and with the Malfoy fortune his to control. He couldn't stomach it, and asked assistance from Snape and the Witness Protection Program to hole up in a small corner of the wizarding world, with a new identity, stripped of his inheritance, where he could serve out his punishment without coming into contact with any of those he had hurt. He could never face Hermione, or the wizarding public, again.

But there she was in the library. Her hair had been a brown halo. A thin scar, not noticeable to anyone who stood farther than a few feet away, bisected her right cheek. Her eyes, looking at him, had been bright and warm. Her teeth were the same perfect size they had been since fourth year.

He had just started to get used to life in this town—to the tiny accommodations, to his meager scholarship stipend, to the coursework, to his part-time job, to the volunteer work, to the smiles and easy laughter of classmates and coffee shop staff. Even Snape, master of hair shirts, seemed to approve, as Draco was finally learning how to breathe again.

And now this.

He fell asleep before he could send the Patronus.


	2. Poised on the Perilous Point

The term went on. He found out more about Hermione Granger only through overheard comments, things people said in study group. Everybody knew her name, of course, and in her first week at school reporters had milled about, hoping for a sight of her or a bit of an interview, but the media eventually dispersed and the town, a comfortable mix of Muggle university town and wizarding streets, was left in peace with its own local celebrity. She was much admired in her classes, or so he heard. She was said to have no airs and to be, as she was so often proclaimed, the brightest witch of her age.

The young men, including some he worked with at the coffee shop, talked about how pretty she was, and if anyone would work up the courage to ask her out, as she was now rumored to have split from Ron Weasley. He heard them as be bussed tables, made coffee (or whatever these sugary confections were which his peers liked so much) and surreptitiously fed the owner's cat; he spoke so little that everybody just assumed he wasn't listening. These painful conversations were ones Draco tried to drown out.

/ \ / \ / \

In his second year at university, Draco found the classes interesting and unexpectedly exhausting. He found that he had to exert twice the effort he had in Hogwarts to keep up, and was able to maintain grades that were slightly above the average. That was good enough; there was no reason to attract further attention to himself.

He spent a few nights a week at the coffee shop, which earned him a small allowance, and Saturday and most Sunday mornings at the Muggle soup kitchen a few streets away from the university. It was a novel experience. The terms of his release from the Wizengamot had stipulated community work, and the soup kitchens had seemed to him the best option as it required the least technical skill or familiarity with Muggle culture. It had seemed more doable than building houses or spending time with the elderly.

By the time term began he'd been at the soup kitchens for almost half a year, doing more manual labor than he'd ever done in his life. The entire building—which was clean but still terribly shabby—was smaller than one of his mother's greenhouses on the Malfoy estate, but after the first month he found himself fairly comfortable there.

He came in for four-hour shifts and was gratified that he wasn't the only young person "volunteering." A redheaded girl named Leslie from one his classes had started helping out two weeks after he began, and when they had shifts together they had small friendly chats during lulls in service. It was nice to talk to someone his age who truly had no idea who he was, and she seemed like a nice girl who reminded him a little of Ginevra Weasley, only somewhat less outspoken.

Leslie volunteered because her Muggle grandmother, who was from the neighboring parish, encouraged her. She seemed to understand that he was a reticent sort of person and often limited her questions to his classes or his job at the coffee shop while they rested and watched the patrons, who were often the same people every weekend, eat.

She also kept him from thinking too much about his family's wealth, while he looked into the faces of homelessness and abject poverty. In childhood he had thought of Malfoy money as the most natural thing, and had been playmates with those who had perhaps smaller houses but similar upbringings. In adolescence the wealth had been most definitely a status symbol, as his fellow Slytherins oohed and aahed over his father's presents and his mother's care packages, and he had thought with derision of those who were Purebloods but lived in poverty, like Muggles. The Malfoys were simply better.

Now that he was slightly older and his family's reputation had taken a severe beating from the end of the war, he couldn't help it—he was ashamed of the money and the way it had bought every material comfort but not safety, or kindness, or principles, or the fortune of being on the right side of the last battle. It soon became apparent that friends ceased to become friends when power dwindled and the ministry seized several of one's family's assets. His mother could still live comfortably and the manor was still theirs, but Draco felt he could never be comfortable there again. Would never be able to walk into the drawing room again. He would rather have been in the soup kitchens, greeting patrons like old friends and knowing that he himself had very little money in his sock drawer. There he could pretend like he was a good person. Only he and Snape knew better.

These were thoughts he never shared aloud, but were extracted from him painfully, slowly, by Snape as he played uncle and tried to figure out what options Draco preferred best when Witness Protection was trying to place him. A month into term, Snape checked in with Draco over the makeshift (and very illicit) Floo connection that they had created, bridging Draco's small stove and Snape's fireplace in Cokeworth. It wasn't large enough for transport but good enough for quick calls.

"And how are your classes?" Snape always sounded slightly bored. He had been the same way all of Draco's life.

"Demanding," Draco said. Snape also liked fewer, more succinct words. He cleared his throat. "Ultimately manageable. I'm struggling in Pharmacognosy but the girl who works at the soup kitchen says she has notes she can let me borrow."

Floo-Snape raised his eyebrows. "The girl at the soup kitchen? Surely not a Muggle?"

"No, she's a Halfblood from a few of my classes. She volunteers on weekends sometimes."

"Good," Snape seemed to hesitate. "It is... acceptable that you should be making new friends."

Draco knew what they were both thinking. The single comment represented a handful of things—a caution on getting too close when he was himself still getting used to his own glamours; an encouragement to fit in as a regular wizarding student; and a veiled inquiry on his romantic interests. He thought of brown hair and a periwinkle blue dress. He cleared his throat again.

"A few of my seniors at the college are also working at the coffee shop after class. They're not really the achieving type though, and they struggle in class even more than I do." He didn't say that the boys often talked about girls and had stopped going out of their way to include him when he showed no interest in their pursuits.

"I see." Snape looked at him steadily, a stare which Draco met resolutely. I keep no secrets from you, he said with his eyes, and Snape sighed.

"Well, I'll bid you goodnight," his godfather said finally. "I'll be putting up this house for sale at the end of the week. I'll be staying with your mother in the interim, but I'll let you know once arrangements at the new place are settled. Is there anything you'd like me to report to your mother? Any requests?"

There were many things he wanted to say, but none he could possibly say aloud, let alone relay to Snape. "No," he said in the end, and Snape shrugged, his image disappearing. Draco was alone again.

/ \ / \ / \

He did a fine job of avoiding all sightings of Hermione Granger all of the next few weeks, while he wondered what to do, and stalled telling Snape. He'd successfully transferred out of her Potions theory class, which was fortunately the only one they'd had in common. Her presence in the same town made him ridiculous. He hadn't seen her for so long. Having her so near kept him wary and expectant; every ring of the bell over the coffee shop door could have been her; she could be walking round this corner, or that. He kept his head down.

He had the next Sunday off, with no shifts at the coffee shop and at the soup kitchen; a rarity, but something he had found was necessary to keep his sanity, so he tried to schedule free days once or twice a month. He often alternated these days off between quiet and solitary explorations of the surrounding towns, and short visits to see Severus. He was supposed to be doing the latter, but the thought of seeing both his godfather and mother made him queasy, and he owled ahead to say he couldn't make it, citing coursework or some other excuse he couldn't now remember.

He decided on a ramble through the second hand bookshops. He had a little money to spare, since he had managed to get most of the books for his courses at the library, and there were a few Muggle bookstores scattered round town, and some he hadn't explored yet. Standing outside in the cold wind and the sunshine, he took a deep breath and checked the pocket map of the city he'd also bought second hand. One of the bookstores was meant to be two streets away. He found it quickly enough. The shop was small and cramped and dusty, as such shops tended to be, and he crouched down to squint at the titles on a low shelf. It was warm, and comforting, and safe. He felt something in him uncurl and relax.

In the end he was choosing between a Lord Byron volume of poetry and a Jane Austen novel. The former read like something flowery and embarrassing, and wasn't something he felt he could be spotted reading, but the poems were emotional and elegantly written. The Jane Austen presented him with something of a dilemma: he had enjoyed, in a way, the five other novels, but he had always felt that the characters—

"I'd choose 'Persuasion'," a voice from behind him said helpfully. He promptly dropped both books.

She was there, bundled up against the cold, looking up at him with a friendly smile. He remembered the little girl who had actually _offered _to help Neville Longbottom look for his frog on their first train ride to Hogwarts, all those years ago. His hands were shaking when he picked the books up again.

"Hello," he said, not meeting her eyes.

"Hi," she said. "Sorry I startled you. Were you choosing between those two? Only you've been holding them both for some time and looking back and forth between them."

He put the books down and pushed his hands into his pockets to conceal the shaking. Still not looking at her, he clipped out, "I was."

She reached behind him, close enough that he could smell her hair and he froze; but she was only reaching for the Jane Austen, and was now turning it over in her fingers, reading the blurb on the back.

"It's honestly my favorite," she said. "Do you read Muggle novels often?"

"Only recently." She was looking at the book, so he felt he could risk a quick look at her face; when her eyes darted up to meet his, he looked away again, cheeks burning. "I—I thought it would be good to get to know things outside of Wizarding culture."

It had been an eye opener. Living in isolation as he had been since the end of the war, he'd had plenty of time before university to read. It was humiliating to know how much his father's beliefs on pureblood superiority had been so far off the mark, and he spent this time exploring what he could of Muggle culture—first with deep secrecy, embarrassment and humiliation, and eventually with real interest.

He'd only had to take one look at Hermione Granger to know that she represented absolutely the best of both Wizarding and Muggle worlds, and he chose books at first that he thought she might have read, diving ahead into a world for which Muggle Studies had barely prepared him. He had barely any idea about Muggle history and society, so the novels held a sort of fantastical quality to him; but he enjoyed them nonetheless, and found himself invested in the plots and romantic attachments. He had wondered if she had liked the romances and had gravitated to them for this reason.

"Have you liked Jane Austen so far?" A sidelong glance.

"I—yes." There was so much on the tip of his tongue to say, but no courage to say the words. How was she really here, talking to him about books? She'd never have been caught dead talking to Draco Malfoy in this amicable way.

"She's said to have written the most complex female characters in most of literature."

"I suppose—but the women are always too forgiving."

Her eyes left the book to focus on his face. His face felt warm. "Why do you say that?"

"The men insult them, lecture them, belittle their families or situations or friends, and the women are angry at first, but then they take things in stride," he couldn't help but to reply. She had a way of looking at him like she was really interested in what he had to say.

"That's an interesting perspective." Her eyes were sparkling. "I can't counter that. But if you think the Austen women are too forgiving, you might want to choose 'Persuasion' after all. It turns the tables a little bit."

"Don't spoil the ending," he said miserably. "Or else I might have to buy the Byron."

"Ah," she said, her smile dimpling one cheek. "Romantic verses for all the girls making eyes at you at the coffee shop?"

"No!" he blurted out loudly, with a vehemence that startled both of them and the shopowner, an old lady with horn-rimmed glasses who peered at them disapprovingly from behind a shelf, before disappearing. Embarrassed, he realized he'd been looking directly at her, and averted his gaze. "I—there's only ever been one girl," he said unnecessarily. And then he blinked as it dawned on him that not only did she recognize him from school, but that she'd known enough about him to know about his job at the coffee shop. He had never seen here there. "And I don't have anyone making eyes at me over there," he added hurriedly.

"On the contrary," she said, amused. "My study group is always inviting me to check out the mysterious boy from class who also works at the cafe. They say you won't give them the time of day."

He blinked at her.

"Did you—did you not realize that they were trying to get your number?" She said, amused.

"Oh," he said weakly. He'd thought they'd been trying to get his contact details in case they needed him for something in class. The very thought of seeking something out romantically with anyone from town made him feel vaguely ill. None of them knew he was a Death-Eater. "I'm afraid I don't have a telephone," he said, which was true.

"I'll be sure to tell them," she said, eyes laughing.

He realized then that he'd made a blunder—he'd recognized her and had been behaving like an old acquaintance without ever having introduced himself. He felt his face flush.

"My name is Derek, by the way," he said to the space above her left shoulder.

"Oh, I know that," she said, still looking at him in that curious, teasing way. Her eyes were so bright and her face was so animated. "I realize we've never been introduced, but I've met you once in a library and once in a bookstore, so you're clearly the best kind of person. My name is Hermione," she added.

"I know," he said. "Everyone knows who you are," he added hurriedly, and she grimaced in response.

"I'd hoped you hadn't," she said. "Oh, well. Damn the _Prophet._" She straightened suddenly.

"Would you like to have a coffee with me? It'll be my treat," she added at the immediate guarded expression on his face. "You don't even need to talk to me very much, but maybe we could read our books?" She gestured to the bag that he only now noticed she was carrying, which had the shop's logo and sagged with books of her own.

Looking at Hermione framed by the bookshelves and the dust mites in the sunlight, he thought of her parents; he thought of his own, the way they had wrinkled their noses at her when they came across the Weasley party at the World Cup the summer before fourth year. He thought of long months wondering how she had been, how she pieced her life together after the Dark Lord had left it in tatters.

He told himself that it was because he wanted to make absolutely sure that she had everything she needed to be doing well; he told himself it was because he wanted to make sure she was happy despite everything his family had done to her and those like her. But in truth, looking into her direct, hopeful gaze, he felt something in himself—something wound tight with tension and fear and guilt, something he hadn't known was there—loosen, and it loosened his tongue along with it so that he said _yes. _

They walked out of the bookstore. Together.

Walking beside her, he realized that he was happy. It was a light, dizzying feeling that he hadn't recognized right away. She was so pretty too, flushed in the cool air, sunlight falling across her face and hair in the most flattering ways. He knew they must have talked of school and their common acquaintances, but he would never be able to remember even half of their conversation; he was floating along in a haze of longing and unfamiliar joy. For a moment he felt like a regular boy walking with a pretty girl in town, and not like an exile who had a skull burned on his arm. It felt so real. He'd never had this with her before; had admired her from behind library shelves and across classrooms but had never had a friendly moment with her that he could cradle to his chest.

He'd remember some details—the tinkling sound of the door when she edged her way into the empty cafe; the cat sleeping in the windowsill across from the two of them as they removed their coats and settled into facing arm chairs; the way her profile looked while she stood in front of him in line at the counter waiting to place an order. It was all so terribly mundane, and terribly precious. His throat tightened.

Hermione got a hot chocolate for him, and tea for herself. He watched her, fascinated, as she took her cup: exactly one sugar cube; a splash of milk at the end. He'd watched her do the same ritual thousands of times in the Great Hall. She caught him staring and he looked away, cheeks warm. She had caught him staring before, across tables of people; but she didn't know it was him now. She settled in with her book, a detective story, and he tried to copy her movements, even though it was impossible to relax. His hands were clammy, shaking as he turned the pages. He had, in the end, bought _Persuasion._

He knew he would have to leave soon. He could never stay so long with her; he was in danger at any moment of betraying himself. But just one moment more, he thought. Just one more minute.

The silence was interrupted by a soft squeal. Draco eyed Hermione over the edge of his book as she bent down from her chair to pick up the cat, which had woken from its windowsill nap and had been sauntering towards the counter. It was huge and grey, and had the same mulish expression that he remembered on Hermione's familiar. She cradled the cat now, petting and scratching gently. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask about Crookshanks. He knew the name because she and Ron Weasley had argued about the cat fairly loudly and frequently. He caught himself just in time. She caught his eye and grinned.

"I love cats," she confessed. "I have a half-Kneazle at home, but I had to leave him behind because the dormitories won't allow pets except owls. Do you have one of your own?"

"My mother has twelve," he said before he could stop himself. He looked at her in horror, but she seemed not to notice; she was giggling. Of course she didn't know about the small zoo of pets that roamed freely in Malfoy Manor.

"I can't imagine," she said. "I'm not quite ready for twelve, but I'm sure I'll get there one day. I'll be a cat lady yet."

The café was starting to fill up with people and the sounds of soft chatter, and he felt quite warm. He kept his scarf on, afraid to unwrap more layers in front of her, but she seemed to feel the heat as well. She unwound her blue scarf from her neck, and unbuttoned the wrists of her long-sleeved shirt. It was when she raised both arms to pull her hair into a ponytail that he saw the scar on her forearm, ugly and a raised, dark pink.

He dropped the book on the table between them, knocking over his hot chocolate. There was a roaring in his ears and he didn't know where it came from. He couldn't quite breathe. She looked at him oddly and he felt his mouth forming words he couldn't hear even as he said them. He picked up his coat and ran outside, as far away from her as possible.

When he came to himself he was in an alley, crouched on the ground, hands over his ears. It was some time before he could breathe evenly.

She was such a lovely girl, and he was a worm.


End file.
